“Biden Is Paying Growers to Replace Farmworkers With Bracero Contract Labor”

On September 22, 2023, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced it would begin paying growers to use the notorious H-2A contract foreign labor…Tapping into $65 million from the American Rescue Act, the USDA will pay between $25,000 and $2 million per application to defray the expenses of recruiting migrant workers from three Central American countries…Labor contractors…will be eligible as well as growers themselves.

The H-2A program allows growers to recruit workers, who today mostly come from Mexico. They can and do discriminate, hiring almost entirely young men and then pressuring them with production quotas to work as fast as possible…

The third goal, “improving the working conditions for all farmworkers,” is political theater…

One example … occurred with … labor violator Sierra del Tigre Farms…In September 2023, more than 100 workers were terminated before their work contracts had ended …The company then refused to pay them… Savino Farms, had already been fined for the same violation four years earlier…

… Rancho Nuevo Harvesting… forced by the Department of Labor to pay $1 million in penalties…

… a group of resident workers charged that high-end winery J. Lohr conspired with a group of labor contractors to pay less than the minimum wage…

[The Resource Centre was not able to contact Sierra del Tigre Farms to invite a response to the allegations; if a response is received in future this page will be updated accordingly]